Apple product prices in Europe

[This is a user-to-user help forum. You are not addressing Apple here.]

Prices reflect costs of doing business in different regions. To give you a few examples:

• Import duties are typically higher in Europe than in US;
• Corporate taxes are higher in Europe (that wasn’t true until recently);
• VAT is included in the advertised price in Europe, while it’s added to the price at purchase time in the US (this alone accounts for nearly a 20% difference);
• European warranty requirements are usually longer, cover more instances and therefore are more expensive;
• Some Europe countries require that warranty replacement units have to be new devices, rather than refurbished, as in the US.

Etc.

Apple employees only moderate the site and occasionally answer technical (and only technical) questions if none of us volunteers answer within a couple of days.

Yeah, the big difference is the sales taxes (as they’re called in the US). They are always in addition to the quoted prices. One reason for it is that in the US sales taxes are assessed by individual states and often also by individual municipalities within a given state. In effect, they vary from city to city, while advertising and web sites are nation-wide.

On the good side, VAT in Europe is usually 18-21%, while sales taxes usually range from 6 to 8.5% in the US.